Back to Il Convento

I went to Italy with my Taiji friends approximately one year ago. My impressions from that trip can be found in a blog post from October 2009.

We had to come back – for so many reasons. It’s a beautiful place; the monastery is situated just outside the village of Trevi in the Umbria province, about 2,5 hours bus ride from the Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome. The valley and the mountain side around Il Convento are covered by olive trees. There’s lots of nice paths to walk in the area to take in all the stunning views.

Live Mørstad is the person in charge of Il Convento and she makes everyone feel welcome and cared for. Her kitchen staff use mostly raw materials from the area to produce simple, but extremely tasty dishes. The food alone is worth the stay! This is what they had waiting for us in the garden when the bus arrived:

Welcome to Il Convento

Welcome to Il Convento

After the refreshments we were taken for a tour of the monastery with Live as our guide. Her enthusiasm is contagious and both recent and ancient history of the place is very interesting indeed. Il Convento was built in 1158 and was visited St. Francis of Assisi.

Live Mørstad

Here’s a picture of the whole group taken by a small church located among the olive trees on the mountain side above the monastery.

The group

We had an amazing week practicing Taiji and Qigong at Il Convento. A day trip to Assisi was also part of the program, I brought the camera, but I didn’t take a single picture while we were there. I just had too many other things going on in my mind at the time.

On our second day we experienced a level 4 earthquake! I was relaxing in a chair on the lawn just after breakfast when I noticed a deep deep rumble and the ground started shaking. I could hear windows and furniture – in fact the whole monastery vibrate. It lasted about 10 seconds and then everything went quiet …

Taiji practice in the garden

Frode and Kristian taking a break by the olive trees

Relaxing by the pool

Frode playing with his balls ...

We’ve already booked Il Convento again for next year. It’ll be great to go back there … If you feel tempted to join us just keep an eye on our web site www. taiji.no. Information about the trip will be posted there in March or April 2011.